Steve Cohen And The Anti Defamation League, And Yet One More Opportunity To Backtrack On MSNBC--Fail!

The ADL was not impressed by Rep. Cohen's behaviour:

Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, issued the following statement:

No matter how strong one's objections to any policy or to the tactics of political opponents, invoking the Holocaust and the Nazi effort to exterminate the Jewish people is offensive and has no place in a civil political discourse.
 
Using the Holocaust as an analogy to express frustration or comparing false information to the anti-Semitic blood libel or to Goebbels' genocidal propaganda is inappropriate and serves only to trivialize the dangers of anti-Semitism and the unique tragedy in human history that saw the murder of six million Jews and millions of others.
 
We respect Representative Cohen's right to engage in vigorous debate about health care policy.  We hope he will reconsider his offensive statement and we urge all members of Congress to reject such odious comparisons.


At least, that may have gotten his attention. Still a thunderous silence from his fellow Dems--the ones who scream about civility...

So, he trundles hisself onto the Ed show...

..and Ed (a member of the Politburo Left, if there ever was one...) throws him softballs to see if he won't back down. And, Cohen begins to make noises that sound like he might regret what he said. Remember, in his world, words don't have meaning--they're just noises you make to get people to let you have your way today. He almost almost almost makes it over the hedge, almost gets it done, and then at the very very end, the RealSteveCohen comes charging back. He takes one final swipe at GOP Congressman Mike Pence:

I think Mike Pence said he often wants to be concise, careful, and consistent. Well that’s someone who I’ll never mention again who lived in the previous century who worked for bad people. That’s what he did.”

In the end, he never regrets a bit of it. So much for civility.

Where's Paul Krugman, who railed about civil discourse? Miz Nancy? Anyone out there amongst the Literati Of The Left? Anyone, save the ADL?

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

HT RedState

Steve Cohen On CNN: John King Gives Him The Opportunity To Backtrack...

...to no avail.

Cohen just kept on insisting that he was justified in his poisonous rhetoric, rejecting King's gentle suggestions that reasonable people may conclude he was comparing his House GOP colleagues to Goebbels.

King even cited words Cohen had recently published about civility in public discourse, which his words on the floor of the House totally discredited. It only made Cohen more adamant. The interview ends with Cohen comparing himself to film maker Mel Brooks, and King finally loses patience by pointing out that Brooks is a comedian, and that Cohen is supposed to be engaged in serious political debate.

One would think...but then again, this is Steve Cohen, and Tennessee Democrats, and House Democrats, led by Nancy Pelosi. OS has yet to see any Democrat distance himself from these horrible remarks by Cohen, or his aggresive re-assertion of the same.

Is there anyone, anywhere amongst the Dems willing to say: 'Yes, he's in my party, and no, he does not speak for me. There's no excuse for this behaviour on the House floor.' How about his Democrat colleagues in the Tennessee delegation, like Jim Cooper of Nashville?

(Sound of crickets chirping...)

Is there perhaps a rabbi anywhere who might wish to point out that just being a member of the Almighty's Chosen doesn't confer a special right to engage in this behaviour?

Is there an historian, or ethics professor in any Tennessee university (or any university), willing to speak up about this sort of thing?

Cohen is a Member of Congress. As citizens of Tennessee, we have a right to expect a grownup to show up on the House floor. Even Mel Brooks would be preferable, because he at least can tell the difference between Nazis and people who happen to disagree with his point of view.

Steve Cohen, D-Memphis, Equating GOP Stance On Health-Care Law To Joseph Goebbels

Really, you just can't make this stuff up. From ABC News, today.

ABC News Jonathan Karl reports:

The newfound civility didn’t last long. Political rhetoric in Congress doesn’t get much nastier than the words of one House Democrat during the debate on repealing the health care law.

In an extraordinary outburst on the House floor, Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN) invoked the Holocaust to attack Republicans on health care and compared rhetoric on the issue to the work of infamous Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels.

“They say it's a government takeover of health care, a big lie just like Goebbels," Cohen said. "You say it enough, you repeat the lie, you repeat the lie, and eventually, people believe it. Like blood libel. That's the same kind of thing. And Congressman Cohen didn’t stop there.

The Germans said enough about the Jews and people believed it--believed it and you have the Holocaust. We heard on this floor, government takeover of health care. Politifact said the biggest lie of 2010 was a government takeover of health care because there is no government takeover," Cohen said.

Cohen made his comments late last night, but they have attracted no attention because his speech was made to a virtually empty House chamber with no reporters around to watch.

Well, someone was present to pass it along. OS believes it would be a good thing for this little gem to circulate and circulate and circulate, especially through the ranks of the Tennessee legislature charged with apportioning districts based upon the 2010 census. For the first time since post-Civil War Reconstruction, Tennessee has a Republican governor, a Republican House, and a Republican Senate, and large majorities in both houses. Time to begin cleaning up over 140 years of mess left behind by the Democrats.

The Congressional Districts of Tennessee are obvious Democrat gerrymanders, which finally failed to produce the expected results in 2010, because the voters outside of Memphis and Nashville had finally had enough, and the old-boy Dems got out of Dodge before they had to face the voters.

Memphis is a classic 'rotten borough', essentially ceded to the Democrats since the days of the Crump machine. It is a dependency of the Welfare State. The crime is awful. The corruption is rampant, and has long been blatant. OS has visited there on days when the racial tension was so thick that no blacks and whites would even look one another in the eye at the grocery checkout line.

Steve Cohen is a proud product of that machine.

When Memphis sneezes, West Tennessee gets a cold. OS thinks it's time that Greater Memphis (including good portions of Germantown and Cordoba, to where the middle class fled to avoid the crime and decay) should be included in the Congressional district that the Hon. Mr. Cohen would find himself attempting to win in 2012. Things would get interestinger and interestinger for him in a non-fixed election.

This speech is, well, shameful. Has one Democrat at either state or Federal level stepped up to disavow those remarks, and scold Cohen in public? Miz Nancy, you there? Paul Krugman? Former Governor Bredesen? Former Speaker Naifeh? Former State Senator Roy Herron? Anybody?

Don't hold yer breath waiting fer it, ya'll. Cohen is the face of the Tennessee Democrat Party, in full flower. Listen and judge.

Memphis, Tennessee--A Whole Lotta Carry Permits Issued

For OldSouth's readership from across the globe, Memphis probably means Elvis, Johnny Cash, barbecue, Beale Street, Blue Suede Shoes and the duck parade at the Peabody Hotel. It's those things, to be sure, but the reality of Memphis is actually quite gritty. A lot of widespread poverty, a lot of concentrated wealth, a long tradition of corrupt machine politics, all situated on a 'choke-point' for all modes of shipping, north-south-east-west, in North America. Built on the nineteenth-century cotton trade(which was predicated on slavery), everything about the place is shot through with race. Locate the city in a brutally hot climate, next door to Arkansas and Mississippi, and stir gently. What could go wrong?

Well, they have always had a crime problem, a drug-and-despair fuelled crime problem, a completely-senseless-murder-and-mayhem-as-a-way-of-life problem.

So, from today's Commercial Appeal:

The simultaneous election of a leftist President and Congress, and a severe economic downturn, have led to a surge in handgun permits across the state, and especially in Memphis.

The number of Tennesseans licensed by the state to go armed increased by nearly 51,000 people last year — to 268,711, according to new state statistics. That's an increase of 23 percent over the 218,004 Tennesseans with handgun-carry permits on Jan. 1, 2009. By comparison, the 2008 increase was 14 percent, according to Tennessee Department of Safety figures.

In Shelby County, the number of residents with handgun-carry permits jumped by 5,205 in 2009 to 38,130, up 16 percent. The Shelby County increase in 2008 was 15 percent.
The new data indicate that about 6 percent of Tennessee residents old enough to have a handgun-carry permit -- those ages 21 and up -- had one at the start of this year.

The permit rate is a little lower among people with Memphis addresses. The 20,716 people in the city with gun permits account for about two out of every 50 Memphis residents 21 and up, or nearly 5 percent.

Knoxville has the highest concentration of permit-holders among the state's largest cities: More than 11 percent of its residents 21 and up are licensed to carry firearms.

That's two years of double-digit increases, year over year.  The article notes a bit later that violent crime rates dropped dramatically as the rate of handgun ownership rose. Of course, the two facts were separated in the article, and no possible correlation between the two phenomena was mentioned. 

It's probably impossible to validly correlate one with the other, but the coincidence is striking. If a person with intent to commit a crime knows he faces a real probability that his potential victim is packing, that is a true incentive to make better life decisions. 

Tennessee is a 'right-to-carry' state, a 'must-issue' state. Ergo, any legal resident of the state with proof of citizenship, no criminal record, who passes the mandated course, completes the application, and pays his $115, will be issued a conceal-carry permit. Comply with the statute, and the State must comply as well. Easy-peasy.


OS predicts the trend will continue...